Understanding of sin and responsibility in the teaching of John Calvin

The understanding of sin and responsibility in Calvin differs radically from concepts later dominant in Reformed theology and in moral philosophy. In federal theology the covenant of works determines man's duty and culpability. Created Into an order of justice and moral law, men is or is supposed to be en autonomous creature who through his power, will, and ability lives by righteous works of merit. This is his responsibility. In this light sin is legal transgression, a failure to provide perfect moral works. This theology is linked with Hie parallel concept in Kantian ethics where responsibility is defined with reference to man's freedom and ability, and where culpability lies in moral failure.Calvin's teaching stands over against these ego-centric concepts, for Calvin begins with a divine order of grace. God as father cares for man; he assumes this responsibility. Man as son is to accept and acknowledge this care. Man is responsible as he responds to and participates in grace. Man is not independent, but dependent; he has no ability of his own, but is enabled and bound by grace in ell things. He is responsible as he in fidelity, trust, obedience, love, and gratitude, allows another to be responsible for him. but in sin man - Adam and humanity - disdains God's grace, as he strives to raise himself up in independence of grace and in dependence on his own ability. In infidelity, unbelief, disobedience, concupiscent self-will, and ingratitude, he disgraces himself, iie disorders and inverts the divine order of grace. The notion that man is or ought to be responsible to God on the basis of his own works is the essence of sin. As God does not give up his fatherhood or the end of his creation, but continues to offer his grace to men in nature end gives it again in law and gospel, man's culpability lies essentially in his free and voluntary rejection of grace. This involves an antinomy, for while man can resist God's grace and is culpable for so doing, he is not and is not supposed to be free and able to accept grace, but is to rely even in his acceptance upon the grace which enables him.With regard to responsibility, predestination, and original sin, Calvin teaches that the apparent conflicts here cannot always be rationally resolved. We are not to employ the more formal and rigid development of logical argument which characterised later Reformed thou^it, but have to acquiesce in truths of a partly irrational nature, and make place for human responsibility alongside our concepts of man's total depravity at birth and of God's predestination. Thus into his concept of an immutable providence of God, Calvin incorporates dynamic concepts, the importance of which has often been overlooked. At the same time, under the influence of reprobation and the bias of polemic or systematic treatment, he sometimes allows these concepts to deteriorate so that he makes errors he has warned against and prejudices the seriousness of his own concept of sin and responsibility

Panglobalism and pandemics: ecological and ethical concerns.

A pandemic is a human medical problem but must be understood at multiple levels. Analysis of social and commercial forces is vital, and, more comprehensively, an ecological framework is necessary for an inclusive picture. Ecological health webworked with political and social determinants surrounds issues of human health. In this constellation of both natural and social factors, ethical concerns will arise at these multiple levels, from human health to the conservation and health of wild nature

Perpetual perishing, perpetual renewal

Includes bibliographical references (page 123).Darwinian nature is in dialectic: conflict and resolution. Human life evolved out of such dialectical nature. If that began in Africa, it continues when humans migrate far North. Religious encounters with such nature, whatever their differences with Darwinism, also find that life is perpetually renewed in the midst of its perpetual perishing. Life is ever "conserved," as biologists might say; life is ever "redeemed," as theologians might say. In this generating of new life, nature is cruciform, beyond the dialectical. Such processes, set in their ecological settings, perennially transform disvalues in nature into prolific values, generating the global richness of evolutionary natural history and its exuberance of life. Such sombre beauty in life is nowhere better exemplified than in boreal and Arctic nature

Disvalues in nature

Includes bibliographical references (pages 276-278).Judgments from fact to disvalue are often made about nature. If natural things just are, absent value, such judgments commit a negative naturalistic fallacy. By parity of reasoning, those who find objective disvalue must also consider objective value. Numerous candidate disvalues are examined: predation, parasitism, selfishness, randomness, blindness, disaster, indifference, waste, struggle, suffering, death. Such disvalues are embedded in a larger systemic value and joined with values equally present, opposites in conflict and resolution

Dominion

Inlcudes bibliographical references (page 111).That humans have dominion over the Earth, a claim of Abrahamic faiths, has been interpreted as the cause of the contemporary ecological crisis. Other interpretations emphasize that stewardship of the Earth is included in the idea of appropriate dominion. Humans may choose to be conquerors, gardeners, developers, trustees, or caretakers

Antarctica

Includes bibliographical references (page 58).Antarctica, the seventh continent, is anomalous, compared with the six inhabited continents. The usual concerns of environmental ethics on other continents fail without sustainable development, or ecosystems for a "land ethic," or even familiar terrestrial fauna and flora. A political Antarctic regime developed policy with a deepening ethical sensitivity over the second half of the last century remarkably exemplified in the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty (Madrid Protocol) at the end of the century, protecting "the intrinsic value of Antarctica," though puzzles remain about how to value Antarctica

Science

Includes bibliographical references (page 1497).Nature is both a scientific and a religious challenge. Nature must be evaluated within cultures, classically by their religions, currently also by the sciences so eminent in Western culture. Religious persons often find something "beyond," discovering that neither nature nor culture are self-explanatory as phenomena; both point to deeper forces, such as divine presence, or Brahman or Emptiness (sunyata) or Tao underlying. Religions often detect supernature immanent in or transcendent to nature, perhaps even more so in human culture, though some religions prefer to think of a deeper account of Nature, perhaps enchanted, perhaps sacred

Environmental ethics and environmental anthropology

Includes bibliographical references (pages 286-287).Is there a particular angle that environmental anthropology offers environmental ethics? Local peoples find that both their natural and their social systems are jeopardized by global forces, requiring concerns for environmental justice. They are challenged to re-interpret outdated customs. Further, the encounter with these premodern systems may expose the metaphysics that drives modern science, epitomized in plans to re-engineer the Earth in an Anthropocene Epoch. Traditional views can serve as a catalyst. Somewhat to our surprise, we may conclude that our science-based, consumer driven, ever more exploitative cultures also need a revised environmental ethics

Human uniqueness and human dignity: persons in nature and the nature of persons

Includes bibliographical references (pages 151-153).Also published in: Pellegrino, Edmund D., Adam Schulman, and Thomas W. Merrill, eds. Human Dignity and Bioethics, 129-153. Norte Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009.The gulf separating humans from all other species can sensitize us to our potential for dignity. Only humans have linguistic capacities capable of sustaining cumulative transmissible cultures. Ideas pass from mind to mind. Our ideas and deliberated practices re-configure our brain structures. The human brain, the most complex thing known in the universe, can generate ideals. Humans become existential and ethical persons, embodied "spirit.

Naturalizing and systematizing evil

Includes bibliographical references (pages 85-86).Negative evils (disvalues) in natural systems, though real enough to fauna and flora adversely affected, must be fitted into an ecosystemic and evolutionary framework, with both conservation of life and generating and testing of novel life forms. Struggle and stress are as essential as life support. Such genesis is always by conflict and resolution. Life is perpetually renewed in the midst of its perpetual perishing